Monday, June 20, 2011

By many counts (all incorrect, as we have established) the first gamebook, this trifling exercise by French author Raymond Queneau was a mere footnote to a career of extreme literary merit. But to us gamebook nerds, it's more something akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls. I plan to be using this brief and manageable "Hello, World" gamebook as Lorem Ipsum template filler for a variety of gamebook authoring systems. But first, I had to incorporate bilinguality and devise my own translation!

Un Conte À Votre Facon (A Story As You Like It), by Raymond Queneau.
Submitted at the 83rd meeting of the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (OULIPO) in 1967.
Translated into English and converted into HTML in June 2011 by A_Gamebook_Fan's good friend Rowan Lipkovits, who would like to the furthest extent possible to license this (unauthorized) English-language translation under the Attribution 2.5 license of the Creative Commons.

25. Once upon a time there were three peas, dressed all in green, who were sleeping sweetly in their pod. Their well-rounded faces breathed through the holes in their nostrils and one could hear their soft and harmonious snoring.

b. If you judge it a waste of time to investigate this question further, go to 33.

33. Opopoï! they cried out, opening their eyes. Opopoï! What a terrible dream we brought forth there! A bad omen, said the first. You betcha, said the second, that's the truth, though it saddens me. Don't worry yourselves about it, said the third, who was the smartest; we mustn't be overcome by our feelings but rather understand -- in short, I'm going to analyse it for you.

a. If you would like to know the interpretation of this dream right away, go to 36.

b. If you wish, on the contrary, to learn the reactions of the other two peas, go to 34.

34. You're spinning us a line, said the first. Since when do you know psychoanalysis? Yeah, since when do you know how to analyse dreams? Yes, since when? added the second.

36. All right then, we'll see! said his brothers. Your irony doesn't please me at all, replied the other, and you won't be learning anything. Furthermore, over the course of this pointed conversation, hasn't your sense of horror been blurred, even erased? Why then would we churn up the muck of your butterfly-ish subconscious? Instead, let's go wash ourselves in the fountain and greet this happy morning in cleanliness and holy joy! No sooner said than done: they slipped out of their pod, let themselves gently roll to the ground, and then had a little trot, winningly and joyously, to the theatre of their ablutions.

a. If you would like to know what happens at the theater of their ablutions, go to 37.